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In any good continuing series there are often some unresolved matters, some with the potential to be time-bombs that could go off at any time. There has been a few such open threads left throughout Ambrose Parry's Raven and Fisher series, mostly in the romantic tension between Raven and Fisher which has been complicated by their differing backgrounds, personalities and their experiences in the medical profession. Since this is set in Victorian Edinburgh, those experiences would have been markedly different for a man and a woman. And then there is the fact that, in the three year gap between the events of The Way of All Flesh and The Art of Dying , both got married to other people.  It's fair to say however - in keeping with the general tone of the series as a whole - neither of those marriages were conventional and certainly didn't resolve the feelings that they had for each other. As we reach what is expected to be the final episode in the five part series, time is runni...

The appearance of Voices of the Dead is a welcome addition to Ambrose Parry's Edinburgh Victorian period medical crime drama series (now collectively known as the Raven and Fisher mysteries, extending it successfully beyond the first three excellent books. There is no shortage of period crime thriller series, but there is obviously something special about this one in the way that it makes use of historical progress and development in science and medicine around this period that contributes to its unique perspective. All the more so since Edinburgh and Dr. Simpson are at the centre of those important advances; advances that not only benefit the general public - and even Queen Victoria, who helped give legitimacy to the use of chloroform to ease the burden of childbirth - but those advances also contribute to the investigation of crime. Medicine and crime are a good match, but it also means a good match in the husband and wife team of Christopher Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, who ...

The third part of the wonderful historical medical murder mystery series, A Corruption of Blood operates very much to the high standards of the previous books, but there is also progression here and a slight change of emphasis. There are a few early hints of the medical issues of childbirth and the role the newly discovered anesthetisation through use of chloroform, a suspicious child death an a suspected murder investigation that has the potential to upset the establishment. Inevitably then since it has invested so heavily in the characters of Raven and Sarah, their relationship and the social complications, class divisions and gender create, comes more to the fore in relation to these matters. Again there is a neatness in how the social behaviours, expectations and even twists of fate that conspire to keep Raven and Sarah apart also provide a context for the period drama and the murder mystery developments. Sarah's ambition to go to Europe to meet the famous female doctor Dr Bla...

Ambrose Parry’s first book, The Way of All Flesh , introduced a terrific crime investigation team with a lot of potential, creating or recreating a successful and somewhat original blend of Victorian Gothic crime thriller and historical medical drama. Its depiction of crime on the backstreets of Edinburgh in the mid-19th century was consequently a little dark and grim, but there was a glimmer of light breaking through in the medical developments around anesthetics and hygiene, two things that were badly needed in Edinburgh, progressed by the real-life eminent physician Professor Simpson and his colleagues around this time. Also progressing around this time, but perhaps not quite so rapidly, was the question of the treatment and attitudes towards women and women’s rights. Dr Simpson’s maid Sarah Fisher’s knowledge of the issues faced by women, her own observations working with Dr Simpson in an unofficial nursing capacity gaining medical experience, would prove instrumental in helping Dr...

Is there room for another Victorian era historical murder-mystery series? On the evidence of this first book from Ambrose Parry, there is definitely the makings of something special and a little bit different from the norm in The Way of All Flesh . Undoubtedly the reason for its success is in the authorship, ‘Ambrose Parry’ being a pseudonym for a writing team comprising of author Chris Brookmyre and medical historian Marisa Haetzman. The rationale behind the team-up, rather than the conventional route of an author relying on expert sources for specialised information, is that the book can enjoy the benefits of authentic detailed historical and medical knowledge of a fascinating period in the development of modern medical procedures and combine it with an established crime author’s sense of plotting and pacing that can tie it into a thrilling murder-mystery. One indication of the collaboration being seamless is that if I didn’t know the Chris Brookmyre was involved in this book, I cert...